During the 2009 season it was made
public that spaces would be granted to new teams wishing to enter
Formula One. An inspired move by the FIA that had already seen Honda
withdraw at the end of 2008 and with the economy in bad shape more
'Manufacturer' teams were likely to follow. The promise of a less
constrained Technical Regulation set and 40 Million budget cap was
enough to entice around 15 entrants. Having issued their interest in
joining F1 the FIA set about due diligence tests on them deciding
that 3 new teams would be given places on the 2010 grid: USF1,
Campos-Meta & Manor Grand Prix. The FIA were right in their
assessment of the 'Manufacturer' teams with both BMW and Toyota
withdrawing from the 2010 Championship, in June 2009 and November
2009 respectively. The largest problem that these 'Manufacturers'
faced was the cost of F1, without the foresight to sell their engines
their costs all remained in house.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing but had
the FIA worked with BMW/Toyota rather than Cosworth, all parties costs
may have been covered and increased the manufactures global exposure.
This is something that Renault have embraced when selling a 75%
share in their own team to Genii Capital at the end of 2009 and
latterly the remaining 25% was bought by Genii in 2010. RenaultSport
currently supplies 4 teams (Red Bull Racing, Lotus F1 Team, Williams
& Caterham) providing them with a means of expansive global
exposure whilst costing them fairly little in return.

BMW Sauber's withdrawral drew interest
from several parties who wished to buy the remains of the team but it
was Peter Sauber himself who reclaimed the team. The FIA granted
Sauber their place on the grid when Toyota announced their exit from
the sport leveraging a deal that would see them keep the BMW name for
2010 granting them their prize money from 2009's championship
positioning whilst using Ferrari Engines/Powertrains. Toyota's exit
from the sport came off the back of a fairly successful 2009 campaign
with the Japanese marque seeing off many of their rivals to 5th
place. However without Honda it seemed the Japanese company didn't
feel it necessary to embroil itself in an expensive motorsport
campaign that didn't achieve it's needs.

BMW Sauber's withdrawal also opened the
door for 1Malaysia Racing Teams entry into the sport with the team
taking the moniker 'Lotus Racing' for which they paid Group Lotus
(The car manufacturer) a license fee to use. The idea behind this
was to leverage some of the historic significance of Colin Chapman's
original Lotus team. Veiled behind this was the outfits desire to
run under the 'Team Lotus' banner something they did in 2011 having
purchased the rights from David Hunt. Group Lotus believed this
broke the terms of the original agreement and started a lengthy
battle between the two parties over the use of the Lotus name in F1.
The original intentions of Fernandes, SM Nasarudin and Kamarudin
Meranun I believe was to use the F1 team as a vehicle of which to
convince the Malaysian government to sell Proton Holdings (Of which
Group Lotus was also owned) to them further fortifying the Naza brand
and turning them into a manufacturer as well as a distributor.

In an attempt to continue the tenuous
link established to Colin Chapman, in early 2011 Tony Fernandes
announced his acquisition of Caterham Cars. The team would
relinquish their use of 'Team Lotus' in 2012 and instead race as
'Caterham F1 Team'. A move that no doubt made life much easier for
both the commentators and fans due to Genii Capitals involvement with
Group Lotus and their 'Lotus F1 Team' moniker/title sponsorship.

Working to such a short window of
opportunity led to the demise of the USF1 team, the team had showed
much promise early on but failed to secure the funding needed to make
the cut ahead of the 2010 season. This left Campos-Meta and Manor
Grand Prix who themselves were to be put under financial strain as
the aforementioned budget cap didn't come to fruition. Campos-Meta
owned by Adrian Campos and was to be funded by Meta ran into
financial difficulties early on leaving the Dallara chassis they had
ordered in limbo. Campos' partner, Jose Ramon Carabante rescued the
team buying out the former F1 driver and installing Colin Kolles as
team principal. Campos-Meta was renamed Hispania Racing F1 (HRT) and
although had missed the pre season tests made it's way to Bahrain
hoping to compete. This battle of finance, national loyalty and
tardiness underpins the way in which HRT have been seen within F1 not
only by the fans but potential sponsors. As the economic environment
has worsened in Spain the team has stayed resolute in it's national
support bringing further financial burden to the team as the car
remains largely devoid of sponsors.

The 2010 season saw HRT seriously off
the pace, the team blamed this mainly on the poor chassis delivered
to them by Dallara. With an underwhelming Aero package mated to a
Cosworth engine and Xtrac Gearbox the team struggled with reliability
as well as development. The problem not only for HRT but all of the
3 new teams was that the new regulations had started a year earlier.
On top of this many of the teams had been preparing for 09 in advance
to steal a march on their rivals. The F110's basic aerodynamic
silhouette at first glance seemed basic but sound.

The teams financial hardship and
ownership transference early it's birth resulted in a torrid
relationship with Dallara whom had been tasked with providing the
2010 challenger. The funding issues the team faced meant the team
were late receiving the chassis' from Dallara. This in turn meant
that Hispania missed the pre season tests which could have provided
them with some much needed track time with the F110. Furthermore the
team (Still not having turned a wheel) arrived in Bahrain unprepared
and shook the car down during qualifying, having missed the three
practice sessions.

The team fielded 4 drivers throughout
the 2010 season mainly due to the funding of the team, Bruno Senna
who financially bought the most backing to the team competed in 18 of
the 19 races. Karun Chandhok competed in the first 10 races of the
season and was arguably the better/more consistent of the two. He
was replaced by Sakon Yanamoto who had previous F1 experience but
undoubtedly bought some financial reward in exchange for his seat.

Scathing comments from Christien Klein
(Test Driver) and Geoff Willis (Technical Consultant) about the
quality of engineering of the F110 provided an insight into the
difficulties in producing an F1 car on a small budget. Dallara have
been building open wheel race cars for decades and should have been
more than capable of producing a worthy F1 machine. The problem
however is Dallara have been producing spec series cars where the
differentiator is setup, F1 requires a much more open ended approach.
Aerodynamically cars change from circuit to circuit to suit the
characteristics of the given track but in 2010 HRT didn't make these
changes. Their 2010 campaign centered around the team understanding
the chassis given to them by Dallara and reducing the weight of other
components on the car. The financial stresses and bad feeling
between the two resulted in them parting company by round 6 of the
Championship. The team didn't develop upgrades for the F110 in
2010 bar the required replacement of the outboard mirrors.

Dallara had taken design cues from
other leading cars notably the RB5 styled narrow nose with nosecone
to bulkhead shoulders and elongated Cascade wings. All 3 new teams
had bulky rear ends housing the Cosworth and Xtrac Gearboxes and
taking care of cooling requirements but all adopted different exhaust
solutions. The launch version of the F110 sported HUGE Front Brake
ducts that would clearly impinge on both the mechanical performance
of the brakes and hinder the aerodynamic performance downstream. The
team did blank off portions of the ducts throughout the season to
increase braking performance but failed to develop new ducts that may
have improved their aerodynamic performance. Further gains were made
by the team by reducing component weight throughout the car meaning
come the season end they appeared to be able to use much more
ballast.

The new teams resources all fell foul
of being a year late to the new Technical Regulations and though 2010
still provided us with the use of Double Deck Diffusers (DDD) the
interpretation used by these teams was un-inspired. Meanwhile the
rest of the grid had learnt lessons from 2009 and had fully
integrated/performance yielding DDD's.

Above: Dallara's attempts at a Double Decked Diffuser on the F110

On top of this McLaren
arrived with their RW80 or as the mainstream media dubbed it: F-Duct.
The drag reducing device that stalled the Rear Wing gave the McLaren
team a significant straightline boost and with the FIA declaring the
device legal the other teams hurriedly went off to design their own
version. Both the cost and time frame to develop their own F Duct
prohibited the 3 new teams from joining this race for a superior
device further damning their efforts to join the sport at a
competitive level.

The F111 was simply a re-imagining of
it's predecessor, lack of funds, facilities and personnel meant the
team simply tried to work out some of the kinks of the F110. The
team also tried and failed in a bid to purchase the still born Toyota
TF110 and make use of their facilities in Cologne. (Speculation
surrounds how much information Geoff Willis gleaned from the TF110 in
the potential takeover) The TF110 that was eventually purchased by
StefanGP and never raced had a innovative Front Wing arrangement with
Cascades that formed as part of the Endplates, a practice that
started to have further bearing during 2012.

Above: The stillborn TF110 of which HRT tried to purchase for their 2011 campaign. The car is shown above in the defunct StefanGP colours that tried to make the grid in 2010 & 2011 but was rejected by the FIA

Once again due to
financial and timing issues the team failed to make the pre season
tests with the F111 but did run an interim spec F110 they called the
F110+ that featured the new Williams Gearbox. Upon arrival at the
first race in Melbourne they failed to show until very late into Free
Practice 3.

Encumbered by the F110's low
bulkhead/chassis the F111 continued to feature a low nose tip
reducing the amount of air that could be directed centrally under the
car. At the first race of the season in Melbourne the team arrived
without the F111's Nose/Front Wing as it was still to pass the crash
tests and instead attempted to qualify with the F110's Nose/Front
Wing (Above). The team fell foul of the re-introduced 107% rule and were
unable to race. This changed when the team arrived at Malaysia with
their new Front Wing and the team qualified with around a second to
the 107% limit.

Above: The F111's Front Wing is almost a
carbon copy of the one used on the Championship winning BGP001 of
2009.

Copying a concept is all well and good
and the multi facted endplate design of the F111's Front Wing was a
huge leap forward for HRT. However with Pirelli supplying the tyres
and yielding a different construction to the Bridgestones of 09 a
different aerodynamic attitude platform is created and so the Wing designed for the 2009 winner may not have been the best fit for 2011.

RW80 / F-Ducts were banned at the end
of 2010 but the FIA took from this the need to reduce drag to aid
overtaking. They introduced DRS (Drag Reduction System) which
allowed the driver to alter the angle of the rear wing top flap
reducing drag. HRT used a centralised pylon in order to incorporate
their DRS mechanism something that other teams on the grid also used.
Strangely the team decided not to use Louvres on the Rear Wing
Endplates (These are used to reduce drag at the outer tips on the top
flap creating a more efficient Wing)

The team redesigned the Sidepods including the entry and undercut which was one of the aerodynamic
failings of it's predecessors. New bargeboards featured in front of
this meanwhile behind now incorporating the Williams Gearbox the
bodywork became a little more svelt. Some interesting design
considerations were made around and above the diffuser / starter
motor with the exhausts placed either side of the crash structure.
The tuning lengths involved in having the exhaust outlets that far
back on the car would be interesting to say the least almost
certainly compromising engine performance.

Above: We can see in this picture the
layout/angle of the radiators within the Sidepod. Mysteriously the
team decided to place them in a halfway house position. Although
they do sit more vertical the convention at the time was to tilt the
radiator to allow more airflow vs reducing the space required to
house the rad.

Some interesting design considerations
were made around and above the diffuser / starter motor with the
exhausts placed either side of the crash structure. The tuning
lengths involved in having the exhaust outlets that far back on the
car would be interesting to say the least almost certainly
compromising engine performance.

With the DDD's banned for 2011 teams re
explored avenues to extrapolate performance from the Diffuser. Red
Bull kicked things off with their EBD (Exhaust Blown Diffuser) that
positioned the exhaust so that the exhaust plume could manipulate the
air between the Tyre and the floor creating a 'Seal'. This also lead
to the implementation of Off Throttle blowing allowing a more
consistent exhaust plume delaying the effect of downforce loss as the
exhaust plume dissipated as the driver came off the throttle.

Unlike their 2010 baptism of fire the
team seemed intent on bringing updates periodically during 2011 the
first arriving in China with a Shark-Fin less engine cover.

Then in Istanbul the team arrived with
new Rear Wing Endplates that featured the aforementioned missing
louvres.

For Monaco the team added a Monkey Seat

The team arrived in Montreal with a new
exhaust layout, utilising the blown diffuser effect, they placed their
exhaust a little further forward on the car than others as the
Cosworth engine was unable to utilise the same Off Throttle blowing
effects seen on the Renault powered cars. Placing the exhaust
further forward means the less consistent exhaust plume doesn't
affect performance as badly.

Amidst the teams 2011 campaign Jose
Roman Carabante sold the controlling stake in the team to Thesan
Capital a Madrid based investment company that stated they wished to
make the team more Spanish. Their intention was to move the
operation to Spain in order to further align their operations
creating a more viable sponsorship attraction to Spanish investors.
It appears Thesan Capital did not share the same vision as Colin
Kolles who had guided the team as Team Principal up until this point,
they parted company in December making way for Luis Perez-Sala.

For 2012 the team would field their own
car for the first time rather than the original Dallara F110 being backwards
engineered for 2011 with a new Chassis based on the F110 built by
CarboTech to pass the new side impact protection tests.

As in
previous seasons HRT failed to make the pre season tests and arrived
in Australia having only driven 100KM, completed at a shakedown.
Their 2012 challenger failed the initial crash tests and so as had
happened in 2011 the team failed to qualify missing the 107% target.

The F112's launch images showed that
they, just as others had, used the rules to incorporate a high tip
nose but failed in it's overall mission as the tub still lay
relatively low. This meant the tub sloped back from from the nose
and resulted in too much bodywork above the splitter. The clean
airflow that the raised nose allowed would quickly stagnate around
the monocoque. The Front Wing was a copy of the F111's without the
cascades, very basic turning vanes drooped below the nose whilst the Bargeboards were removed entirely. Tighter packaging at
the rear could help airflow over the top of the floor but the exhaust
solution unlike most of the field was designed to blow under the Rear
Wing. The F112 was designed with KERS in mind but the team opted not
to use the system initially to better understand the relative
performance of the car.

Above: Barcelona saw the team implement the
first major upgrade with a new less complicated Front Wing design
with a Singular Top Flap and new Cascades (The Front Wing upto now
had received the same Cascades used on the F111, as the launch one
had them deleted) basic turning vanes drooped from under the nose
and serrated Bargeboards were added too. The car also featured a new
Rear Wing Endplate design which altered the geometry of the Louvres
along with the leading and trailing edge profiles.

In Monaco the team ran with a Monkey
Seat to generate some additional downforce

In Montreal the team arrived with a new
lower downforce Rear Wing setup

The team went through many changes
throughout it's first 3 seasons in F1 but financial worries dogged
the team throughout. By far the least funded team on the grid the
team did well to finish ahead of the Virgin / Marussia team in
2010/11 which would have awarded them more financial reward via FOM
winnings. The new Concorde Agreement that Bernie Ecclestone has been
negotiating with the teams may well have laid the foundations for
Thesan Capital to put HRT up for sale:
http://www.hrtf1team.com/en/noticias/comunicado-oficial-de-thesan-capital-sl.html

The new Concorde Agreement is said to
only offer FOM prize money to those teams that finish in the top 10
at the end of the season. This funding is a much needed requirement
for teams like HRT who would use it as a way of funding some of their
transportation costs.

It seems the final chapter of HRT was
written when the team were unable to find new buyers and missed the
2013 Entry deadline. The entry fee is a small price to pay at
500,000 euro's you may argue but with the team racking up debts the
team seem to have turned their last wheel in anger in F1.

So what can be learnt from the demise
of the team in F1? From a financial standpoint the team were
initially let down by the eventual loss of the Budget Cap proposed
for 2010. The initial figure put forward by Max Mosley and the FIA
was £40 Million which was designed to minimise the costs involved in
competing in F1. Teams like HRT (or Campos-Meta) at the time had
used this figure in order to understand what was achievable in F1.
In principle HRT had a great plan, by asking Dallara to make their
2010 chassis they could budget for the rest of what was required by
the team and allowed them to run with a relatively low number of
in-house staff. When the Budget cap didn't come to fruition it meant
even their 2 closest rivals were able to overspend them if they could
raise the funds. In reality for the budget cap to have worked it
would have meant a figure somewhere between £60-80 Million as this
would have enabled some of the then lower grid placed teams to also
take advantage of the cap. The enticement of free-er Technical
Regulations mated with a sustainable budget could have led to some
interesting concepts and racing.

HRT's shortcomings was foremost their
budget, this impacted on their punctuality with the team missing the
pre season tests of 2010 losing valuable mileage and setup time
compared to their rivals.

It's believed that the team ran for
just shy of £60 Million in 2010 & 11 which when compared to the
likes of Red Bull Racing who spend around 3 times that seems
impressive. This proves that racing in F1 can be cost efficient but
to be competitive a lot more money is required.

So what sort of
business model can be effective in F1?

Well the obvious ones are to
be backed by Manufacturers or to find substantial backing from large
corporations. These will always remain the best way in which to
survive in F1 but other avenues are available. HRT exploited pay
drivers throughout their first 3 years but perhaps not to their full
advantage more latterly.

For 2012 HRT ran with 2 drivers: Pedro
de la Rosa and Narain Karthikeyan, the team chose Pedro for
nationality purposes and although he may well have a small collection
of personal sponsors they offered nothing like the reported 8
Million Euro's bought to the team from TATA by Narain. The team also
took on another Spanish Driver: Dani Clos as their 3rd
driver who likely bought a little money to the team via his Free
Practice drives at Silverstone, Hockenheim & Hungaroring.

It could be argued that teams like HRT
could help with the transition of drivers from lower formula to F1.
Red Bull used this to their advantage in 2011 when they reportedly
paid the team around 5 Million Euro's for Daniel Ricciardo to drive
the last 10 races of the season. Ricciardo went on to drive the Toro
Rosso STR7 in 2012 after satisfying the owners of Red Bull that he
was deserving of his place within the driver programme.

Many drivers need a route to F1 and
being able to drive even with a less competitive team like HRT could
offer them the chance to be seen. Selling Free Practice sessions to
future talent could have provided the team with a much need cash
injection and the drivers expenses would be covered by their own
sponsors. This leads me onto the next way of generating funds, by
having these drivers onboard their car it would give the team access
to the sponsors themselves something the team struggled with
throughout it's time in F1.

If we look back at 2009, BrawnGP
although still partly funded by Honda after their withdrawal opted to
do race by race sponsorship deals. With the help of Richard
Branson's Virgin group the team quickly realised that they could do
deals based on the locality of the race itself. Sponsors that had
previously never been seen in F1 suddenly had the power to leverage
cost effective sponsorship and helped to fund BrawnGP's Championship
year. Of course we know HRT aren't Championship material but costs
are all relative and so gaining sponsorship in this way is certainly
an option I'd explore under team ownership.

Of course all of these options were
overridden by the teams unwavering belief that their Spanish
nationality was the most important aspect of their image. The
problem being that the economic downturn has effected Spain immensely
and so gaining sponsorship from the region proved hard at best.

What I believe the FIA/the sport should
also take away from this is that F1 is still fragile in terms of
finances and just like HRT many teams will need to adjust their
behavior to survive. It could be argued that there is an opportunity
for 3rd cars or customer cars but even this would change
the face of F1 beyond recognition.

All in all I will miss HRT, I admired
their ethos even though it seemed misguided at times. Their relative
success of 2010/11 was driven by their ability to extract performance
from a relatively unchanged car something the likes of Red Bull,
McLaren & Ferrari have been unable to do over recent years.
With the top teams spending inordinate amounts of money on resources
and developments the delta to the lower teams will always become
larger but HRT for the large part kept up. They did what they could with a small budget creating a baseline and concentrating on mechanical performance and High/Low downforce aerodynamic upgrade configurations.

Whilst I'm trying to keep atop of the blog you may have noticed of late that there is less content appearing. For those of you that haven't realised, most of my work has now been moved over to Motorsport.com where I'm working with Giorgio Piola.

I'm still doing the technical image gallery for each GP with the continued support of friend of the site Sutton Images. However, as always my time is limited and so this might not be updated as quickly as it once was, so keep checking back.

As some of you may have found out already I'm also working with the Missed Apex crew on their podcast from time-to-time, either doing race reviews or dedicated 'Tech Time' shows.

I've embedded the latest version of the podcast below and will update this a frequently as I appear. However, please head over to Itunes if you want it to appear in your player when episodes are available. The show is great to work on and has a great lineup of 'regulars' but has also enticed some bigger names recently too, with Will Buxton and Bradley Philpot on shows during the summer break.

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Sutton Images provide the best images direct from the action every GP weekend allowing me to show you just where and what the teams are improving.